Don’t Go There!: From Chernobyl to North Korea—One Man’s Quest to Lose Himself and Find Everyone Else in the World’s Strangest Places

by Adam Fletcher

Those of us born as majority people will never know how much of a fight it is to live as a minority, not protected by the cushioning of statistics.

Nuclear really is the nuclear option. There’s no going back, no undo; its scars are permanent.

Boredom is a luxury good. This simple statement dug its claws into me and didn’t let go. Of course. I’d lost sight of the extraordinary privilege inherent within boredom. Most people in the world don’t get to decide whether or not to engage in politics. Don’t feel so safe and secure and bored that they actively go out looking for danger, just to feel more alive.

An obligation-less life is a selfish life.

We’d been told that North Koreans had been told that all foreigners were enemies—prisoners of capitalism living in inferior, miserable countries—who wanted nothing more than the destruction of the real Korea. Whereas we’d been told that they were all just brainwashed lemmings. Whether or not either of these things were true, as we undressed together, saw each other naked and failing at the same basic human things like not falling over while taking off our socks, we seemed pretty similar to me.